Biden’s Bombs-War and Money

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Biden’s Bombs / War and Money
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Biden’s bombs, Biden’s bombs—
Two thousand pounds apiece—
They blow the kids to smithereens, 
And serve to keep the peace.
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If Trump returns, he’ll send more bombs 
To Israel and say,
“We’ll send them to the Saudis too, 
If they agree to pay.”
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And hearing all the folk who shout
That this is genocide 
And fearing that in politics
This might be suicide,
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Biden, Blinken both declare,
“We need to end the strife.”
But keep on sending bombs and planes
To end what's left of life.
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******
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War and money, war and money—
Whatever be the weather—
You’ll find that each provides for each. 
They always go together.
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We've made our zones of peace, within
Their circles wide or small,
Where business booms. Outside the zones,
We find the free-for-all.
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And that is where our bombs are dropped—
And conflicts are inflamed,
As money drives the wheels of war, 
And “terrorists” are blamed.
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Wealth and power, wealth and power,
Unabated greed:
Death and dread and suffering—
These are what they feed.
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******
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Religion and democracy—
It’s not about that stuff.
It’s all about the land, the oil…
We’ll never have enough.
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So don’t believe the evening news;
It’s sadly filled with lies.
When eyes and minds and hearts are blind,
Then truth, with justice, dies.
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“Why should we care for Palestine
And people far away?
But Israel is different!”
Is what the people say.
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But Biden's bombs are ours too. 
Our taxes pay for those.
The Congo, Yemen, South Sudan?
They aren't far. They're close.
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2024 May 22nd, Wed.
Berkeley, California
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Sacrilege

 
Sacrilege

The only g*n*cide memorialized,
The only one in which we all are drilled,
Repeatedly, through schools and books and films,
With monuments erected, tributes paid,
With pilgrimages due, from those on high
Before we vote, is that which stands alone.

No other slaughters, even those that cleared
The continents on which we settlers live,
Can ever be compared to that Event
Of horror that is singular, unique.

And so our taxes can be used to send
Not only funds but lethal armaments
With which to maim and slaughter thousands. This
Cannot be questioned, nor compared to that—
The One whose name is all but deified.

So through this means, such horrors still are wrought
As might make even hardened mobsters pause
And yet are waved away or justified—
For there can only be that G*n*cide—
That One, that Only, Duly Guarded Thing—
That shields the ones who massacre and starve,
With critics charged with vilest heresy.

And so it is that all the horrors past
And all the ones succeeding that Event 
Of special, primal status, never count,
Nor those that happen right before our eyes.

So truth itself is buried deep in lies,
As bodies are—the dead or still alive—
Beneath the tons of wreckage. Still, we see
The women, children, elders, blasted, burned,
With cats and humans, huddled, homeless, starved,
And lies repeated—till a nation dies.

And some of us have slowly come to know
That even mentions of the victims or
Their land had been forbidden, seen as crimes,
Within the realms of those who’ve realized
With ardent help from other nations, this—
The crime of crimes. And now, in other lands,
The moves are underway, or well in place,
To stem the images and stop the words. 

The goal is not to simply end the lives—
And so the people—but to wipe, erase
The names themselves. What’s nameless can’t exist—
Or so the thinking and the feeling goes,
As power and wealth direct our human flows
And shape our sets of facts, our thoughts and views
By every means—including nightly news.

So is this something new? No, not at all,
Except for what those windows let us see
And hear, as if the ones who sobbed and screamed
Or spoke to us in fright, in measured tones,
Were present where we are, and not where lives
Are snuffed like candles by the blasts of bombs. 

And so we now will see those windows close,
Unless we rise together and resist
And dare to say the word we’ve all been told
Is sacrilege—and yet is naught but truth.

For what had occurred in the past and then
Repeated in our lifetimes is again 
Revived and walking, dressed in black, with scythe,
But wielding now the weapons we have wrought
That burn and blast and bury thousands, while
We coddle those who perpetrate these crimes. 

2024 March 12th, Tue.
Berkeley, California

Freedom?

 
Freedom? 
  

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2015/01/16/do-we-need-hierarchy

We say, “This is a country free.”
And yet, I’m sure, to a high degree,
That almost everyone I see
Is an “owner” or an employee.

And though some might be both, we know
Our minds are set where income’s more.
And each of us, in verbiage, thought
And action, are, in mindsets, caught.

https://www.cuinsight.com/common-money-mindsets-hold-back.html

For every “owner”, you will find
A thousand of the other kind—
The ones who work, with hand or mind,
For bosses—gracious or unkind.

And which of these, I ask, is free?
And what’s the measure or degree
Of freedom that could ever be
The portion of an employee?

And even he, the boss of bosses,
With minions counting gains and losses,
Must carry too his gilded crosses.
Upon his bed, he turns and tosses.

So when we say that freedom shines
And show contempt for one who whines,
Remember—freedom isn’t guns
Or bombs that make a thousand suns.

Freedom is the lack of debt
And not being caught within the net.
You’ll find your freedom—this, I warrant,
When poised to be, where bosses aren’t.

https://memegenerator.net/instance/25900078

Kayapos dancing, with shorts and sandals on, Brazilian Amazon, by Thomas L. Kelly
http://www.thomaslkellyphotos.com/STOCK/TRIBES/Kayapo-Tribe/i-FqdBkCg

 
But even if you struggle free,
By climbing up the power-tree
Or breaking loose, what happens then
To all, who still are captive men?

A captive woman too must dance
As much in Yemen as in France.
And now, despite the "women's lib",
For women, freedom's still a fib.
 
Some dream that freedom will arrive
On owning Benzes they can drive.
And others aim yet higher, while
They wreak their damage, mile on mile.

There can’t be freedom, when the banks
Get richer, while the men in ranks
Are marching, so that profits flow
To those, who’re wanting even more.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/ten-examples-of-welfare-for-the-rich-and-corporations_b_4589188.html

 
There can’t be freedom, when there’s war
That issues from the place you are—
Or comes, like dread disease, to visit,
Bringing woe and horror with it.

http://mamaruko.deviantart.com/art/War-is-Fun-172851282

When corporations give the orders,
As humans still are penned by borders,
While money speeds like light, with ease,
Then serfdoms grow and freedoms cease.
 

http://tabaaninga.canalblog.com/archives/2007/08/02/5790494.html

So women in the past have marched—
And others, who had long been parched—
To drink of freedom’s heady draft.
And yet, they’re snared by Mammon’s craft.

http://rrrrodak.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

 
So sons of slaves might wonder why
They still must work, until they die,
At jobs they’d rather leave, but can’t,
While hearing still that jive, that rant.

The daughter of a worker slaves
And pinches pennies, scrapes and saves,
But still, with earnings low, may find
A world that hardly rates as kind.

“We’re free!” the politician blares,
And yet our heads are filled with cares.
We’re free, in certain states, to buy
Our guns—but not to question why.

We see that science, much maligned,
Has been, by engineers, aligned
To suit the needs of plebes and those

Who buy, at Bloomingdale’s, their hose.
 

http://www1.bloomingdales.com/shop/product/spanx-shaping-sheers-in-power-line-super-high-waist-914?ID=478659

And so, we’re free to buy the stuff
That’s made by workers treated rough
In distant places, and we’re free
To claw to climb the hierarchy.

And science and tech have brought us things
Like ‘planes that speed on windswept wings
And ‘phones that each of us can carry
And bounties for the military.
 
We’re free: to use, instead of rocks,
Our fiery bombs, with thunderous shocks;
To burn alive, our fellow species;
To strew the planet with our feces!

If this indeed is freedom, why,
Do give me freedom, then, to die.
If freedom truly comes, then whisper,
“That dummy missed it by a whisker.”

But if, as likely, it remains
As distant, query, "Who then gains,
When workers, working ever faster,
Speed the race towards disaster?"
 

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/526850856385202506/

“Produce, produce!” the teachers teach.
“Consume, consume!” the pundits preach.
Who then has time to think, reflect?
To Mammon’s priests, we genuflect.
 
“Free-dumb! Free-dumb!”  Hear that shout
And ask yourself, what it’s about.
Can ignorance let freedom be
What it should mean to you and me?
 
2016 June 25th, Sat. & June 30th, Thu.
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
 

http://whatwouldjackdo.net/2013/05/if-this-is-what-freedom-looks-like-to-you-lets-call-it-what-it-is-freedumb.html

         

Midnight

 Midnight

 In yogic meditation the blind beggar waits
 For the last coin to clink in his rusty old can.

He can't see the streetwalker hovering in hope
For the chance passer-by who just might make her night;

Nor the cop, drunk to stupor and sprawled in a halo
Of spew by the kerb, right below the street lamp;

Nor the dog and the bitch in the lamp-post's precarious
Shadow, conjoined in a quiet coital act.

The temple pujari tots up his day's takings
And locks the cage door on his gilt-edged ward,

Picks a stone off the footpath, hurls it at the dogs,
Crosses over to the woman and takes her by the hand.

Arm around her waist, he leads her to his shack,
Walking past the beggar, flings a fistful of change;

Some jangles on the sidewalk, some clinks in the can;
The mendicant is shaken from his pensive trance.

He scurries round the pavement, gets each last coin in;
Then, spreading out his gunny sack, turns in for the night.

By the kerb, the cop stirs, turns over and snores;
And the deity behind the bars stares, stony-eyed. 

Vivek Khadpekar
Ahmedabad, 1988

By the same author:  Rites of Passage / Vespertinal